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Innovating a Turnaround at LEGO

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Innovating a Turnaround at LEGO
Transforming the LEGO organization, one process at a time\

Anette Falk Bøgebjerg, Mark von Rosing & Henrik von Scheel

Key words: Business Complexity, As Is – To Be Transformation, Operating Model, Process

Lifecycle, Process Standardization, End 2 End Processes, Application Lifecycle, Business
ownership, Business Governance, BPM Strategy, BPM Benefits, Lean, Process Documentation,
Knowledge Sharing, Process Decomposition, Process optimization, Culture, Process Variances,
Continuous Improvement, Change Management, Quality Management System (QMS), &
Environmental Management System (EHS), Value Lifecycle

1. Introduction
The story of the LEGO Group

In 1932 Ole Kirk Kristiansen, a Danish joiner and carpenter, began making wooden toys. The
business he established later passed from father to son, and today the founder’s grandson, Kjeld
Kirk Kristiansen, and his children own the LEGO Group.

In 1958 Godtfred Kirk Christiansen, son of Ole Kirk Kristiansen, made what would prove to be an
extremely wise decision. On January 28, 1958, at precisely 13:58 he submitted a patent application
for the LEGO® brick that was – literally – to prove to be the cornerstone of a toy fairy tale. At the
start of the new millennium the LEGO brick was acclaimed “Toy of the Century” – first by Fortune
Magazine and later by the British Association of Toy Retailers.

It was Founder Ole Kirk Kristiansen himself who hit upon the LEGO name in 1934. He took the first
two letters of the Danish words LEG GODT, meaning “play well”, and combined them – quite
unaware that one meaning of the word in Latin is ... “I put together”. To this very day “LEGO” is
both the name and the concept behind the company. Play is a key element in children’s growth
and development, and play stimulates the imagination, the emergence of ideas, and creative
expression. The aim of the company’s products is to “inspire and develop the builders of
tomorrow”, and all products are based on the underlying philosophy of learning and development
– through play. It is the LEGO philosophy that “good quality play” enriches a child’s life – and lays
the foundations for later adult life.

True to its motto “Only the best is good enough”, the LEGO Group has been emphasizing the
importance of high quality since 1932. This approach has brought consumers back to LEGO
products time and again. At the same time the LEGO system means that many thousands of
building elements can be easily combined in innumerable ways – and just as readily dismantled
again. The more LEGO bricks you have, the more fertile your creativity can become, and there are
hours of play in the LEGO brick that you don’t find elsewhere. Child’s play is an ever changing
world, and the company’s product development departments therefore work systematically with
the evolution of play themes and product lines based on research among children and parents into
things like play habits, family patterns and housing conditions. In addition, the combination of a
structured system, logic and unlimited creativity encourages the child to learn through play in a
wholly unique LEGO fashion. At a time of growing demand upon children’s capacity for learning
and their ability to solve complex problems, the LEGO system is perfect for the child of tomorrow,
and it is frequently cited by many leading organisations and individuals as a specially creative play
material used in learning contexts by institutions and schools throughout the world. The child of
the future will have plenty of things to play with.

Consumer electronics is a tough competitor to traditional toys. But the LEGO Group is in no doubt
that the LEGO brick will continue in future to be relevant to children of all ages. A world of
imagination and total absorption. Putting two LEGO bricks together is intuitive and delivers the
spontaneous joy of creation which can be supplemented – but never replaced – by virtual
experiences.
2. The LEGO Group Situation (size, complexity)

Financial highlight – The LEGO Group:

(DKK mio.) 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010

Income statement:
Revenue 28,578 25,294 23,095 18,731 16,014
Expenses (18,881) (16,958) (15,489) (13,065) (10,899)
Operational profit 9,697 8,336 7,606 5,666 4,973
Financial income and
expenses (206) (97) (84) (124) (84)
Profit before income tax 9,491 8,239 7,522 5,542 4,889
Net profit for the year 7,025 6,119 5,613 4,160 3,718
Employees:
Average number (full time) 12,582 11,755 10,400 9,374 8,365

To be able to handle such a growth it is important to have standardised ways of working and
standardised business processes.

Fun LEGO® facts

• LEGO® products are on sale in more than 140 countries.

• The LEGO Club has 5 million members worldwide.

• On average, every person on earth owns 102 LEGO bricks.

• With a production of over 650 million tyres in 2014, the LEGO Group is one of the world’s largest
tyre manu-facturers.

• Laid end to end, the number of LEGO bricks produced in 2014 would reach more than 24 times
round the world.

• If you built a column of about 40 billion LEGO bricks, it would reach the moon.

• In the manufacture of LEGO bricks, the tolerance of the knob is 2/100 mm.

• Over the years, approx. 760 billion LEGO elements have been manufactured.

• In 2014, the LEGO Group achieved a global production of more than 60 billion elements –
equivalent to approx. 117,000 elements a minute or 1,960 elements every second.
• In 2014, the 1x1 round plate was the LEGO element produced in the largest numbers. A total of
approx. 2 billion 1x1 round plates in various colours were moulded. If the transparent version of
the 1x1 round plate is added, the total production amounts to approx. 3.4 billion elements.

In 2014, approx. 27 billion LEGO elements were made at the factory in Billund, Denmark –
equivalent to more than 3 million elements an hour or approx. 52,000 a minute.

• In 2014, 1.6 million sets per week, on average, containing more than 27 billion LEGO elements
were packed at the LEGO factory in Monterrey, Mexico.

• The new high-bay warehouse at the LEGO factory in Kladno, Czech Republic, has a total capacity
of approx. 200 km of shelf space with room for approx. 360,000 storage boxes with LEGO
elements. The automated cranes in the high-bay warehouse can handle approx. 1,300 boxes per
hour.

• 5 million LEGO® DUPLO® elements are moulded daily at the LEGO factory in Hungary – if you laid
them in a line, it would stretch 84 km.

• In 2014, more than 550 million minifigures and mini doll figures in total were produced. If you
put them next to each other in a line, it would stretch almost 14,000 km. This resembles the trip
Billund – Boston – Budapest – Billund.

• Ole Kirk Kristiansen, the Founder, came up with the name “LEGO” in 1934. He took the first two
letters of the Danish words “LEG GODT”, meaning “play well”, and combined them – quite
unaware that one meaning of the word in Latin is… “I put together”.
3. The LEGO Strategy (Why)
It is the LEGO Group’s aspiration to further globalise and innovate the LEGO® System in Play
through:

Sustaining core commercial and operational momentum

We will sustain the growth of our core business, covering children aged 1½-11, through
development of great products within existing product lines such as LEGO® DUPLO®, LEGO City,
Creator, Friends, etc., but also through developing and launching new product lines. Also, we will
initiate ongoing improvement initiatives within procurement, production and marketing.

Expanding the global presence

We will expand our global presence – eventually reaching children in every country of the world.
We will do this commercially through focus on new emerging markets such as China, operationally
through the establishment of new factories and organisationally through the establishment of
centrally located main offices.

Leveraging digitalisation
We consider digitalisation as a way to make our core business – the physical LEGO play – even
more attractive and exciting. To do this, we will leverage digitalisation over a broad range of topics
– e.g. integrating physical and digital play,
e-commerce, marketing and our business/enterprise system.

Create the organisation of the future

We will build a truly global and diverse organisation to meet the adaptive challenges, gain
competitive advantage against intensifying competition and build required stewardship of
environment, governance and social responsibility
4. The LEGO Group BPM Description
a. The BPM vision

The BPM vision has been to support the LEGO Group’s growth path and ensure the operational
execution by standardized ways of working and standardized business processes. Supporting the
LEGO Groups continuous growth by focusing on a standardized Revenue Model, Service Model
and Operational Model. The aim for operational excellence was supported by focusing on
standardizing the Performance Model, Value Model and Cost Model.

Prepare for the future: Establish process documentation

Process documentation may sound boring but the benefits from having processes documented are
definitely not. Process documentation can be considered as an extremely valuable vault of
knowledge, guidance and helping hands.
Several thousand new employees will join the LEGO Group in the coming years and at the same
time a large number of employees with a total amount of hundreds of years of experience will say
goodbye. But who will ensure that the knowledge the old and experienced employees have about
the LEGO way of doing things, is brought on to the next in line? And what if an employee suddenly
gets a tile in the head and this person is the only person who knows how to solve a specific LEGO
task – what then? This is where process documentation comes to the rescue. Process
documentation is about retaining knowledge. It is like plugging a USB stick into the minds of
experts and downloading their relevant LEGO knowledge and experience. Once knowledge is
captured, it can be shared in a structured approach. It is therefore vital that as illustrated in figure 1,
all parts of the organization see where they are part of the joint Operating Model. Be it in the areas of
business governance, process ownership, value creation, process modelling or application aspects.

Figure 1: LEGO’s Application, Process and Value Lifecycle including the 6 Business Model domains. See table
3 for a list of the modelling principles associated with this Lifecycle Model.
When the operating model across the various lifecycle, are not documented, new employees must search
for information on how to do their jobs. New employees will fill in the blanks themselves and define
their own processes – all factors which could limit their ability to execute the job and increase
frustration. Without documentation, there is always a risk that people will execute the process
differently; different techniques, costs, turnaround time, etc. may yield different results. By
defining a “best practice”, we define the standard for performance. This is actually quality
assurance of the process that ensures that the process creates the same process output (Quality)
at the same time and price.
When a process has touch points to other processes there is a risk that things might end up in a
gray zone where neither process stakeholder takes ownership for a given task or tasks. One part of
the process expects the other part to do something and vice versa. In this case process
documentation can help as an eye opener and a communication tool to strengthen the agreement
between two processes.

Documentation of existing processes provides a foundation for continuous improvement. If the

improvement does not have the desired effect the documentation should be used to fall back on
while capturing the learnings from the trial. Does the improvement have a positive effect it is
important to document the new standard ensuring that the process documentation is updated at
any time.

Three reasons to document processes:

1. Capture knowledge
2. Share knowledge in a structured way
3. Establish a foundation for process optimization

New employees at the LEGO Group are often trained in the LEGO way of doing business through
on the job training. This approach, however, is subject to risk of losing knowledge in the handoff.
In some cases bad habits and bad knowledge is passed on to the new employee meaning that it is
not always the correct knowledge which is transmitted and therefore it is not necessarily the
smartest way of working which is passed on from and old employee to new employee. When
knowledge is not found in a structured form it means that the employee is dependent on others'
knowledge and their availability. The LEGO Group is about to employ several thousand people
worldwide over the next number of years and there is a big risk that they do not know who to
contact to get the piece of knowledge they are looking for, and it is a huge challenge.

Therefore, the LEGO Group wants to create a platform where knowledge is captured in a
structured and uniform way across the entire LEGO Group. The platform should be available to all
employees at any time and if the employee wants to have deeper knowledge about a specific
subject/process then the employee will be given the correct contact person/process owner at any
time.
Figure 2: overview of the three reasons to document processes and the transformation journey (As-Is to To-
Be)

Godtfred Kirk Christiansen, son of the founder Ole Kirk Kristiansen once said. ”When we know the
past, we can better understand the present. When we understand the present, we are better
equipped to meet the future” - and this is basically what process documentation is all about. To
create a foundation which tell us how we work today so we can prepare for the future and future
challenges.
b. The BPM initiative
The standardization and automation of the business processes was the objective to document the
business processes with the LEGO Group. Aimed to create a solid platform of knowledge as set by
the executive management of the LEGO Group. This project is called Polaris (after the guiding star
Stella Polaris). The time horizon for the Polaris project has been 4 years, equivalent to around
2500 processes on a global level.

This project is rather challenging, not because it is a very complicated project to lead, but because
the project is up against a corporate culture that is not used to document and discipline
themselves, and a culture that would rather focus on new things and new initiatives, rather than
ensuring that all documentation and anchoring is in place. It is therefore essential to make a huge
effort to get the organization to understand why it is important to document business processes.

To succeed with such a project, the following things are important to have in place:

• Anchoring in and support from top management

• Process Experts and process designers that can help the business
• Communication material that focuses on the value of process documentation seen from the
business point of view
• User-friendly IT tool to ensure uniform documentation
• A set of global conventions for process documentation

And finally, persistence, persistence AND persistence.

c. The BPM approach
The organizational set up

The process documentation project is anchored in the executive management as it is a cross-

organizational project. The project is organized with the following key roles:

- Process consultants who are experts in identifying processes and have broad knowledge of
business processes. These resources are organized in a central team.
- Process modeling experts for each high level process stream who are responsible for
documenting and maintaining the processes in the process stream. These resources are
organized in the business
- 'Local' project managers for each business to ensure resources to create documentation,
report progress and challenges to the 'local' management and the core team
- Process experts who provide input on how as-is processes are executed
- Leadership representatives from the various process streams may participate in a
leadership network where the direction for process documentation is set across the entire
company

The different roles are described in figure 3 and the project organization is described in figure 4:

Figure 3: Various BPM roles defined

The project organization:

Figure 4: The project organization defined

The project is organized based on a process approach and not on a functional approach. This gives
rise to a lot of positive discussions across the organizational units around which processes each
area of the organization are responsible for and discussions on where a process ends and where
another one takes over and whether it goes across departments.

The project covers all processes of the LEGO Group which provides a certain degree of complexity.
The complexity consists of:

Process Analysis:

There already exists some documentation in the company which all makes sense for the areas that
produced it. All this documentation should via the project be standardized and changed to the
global standard for documentation in the company

Process Design:
There are many wishes for how the conventions should be defined, and what the documentation
platform should look like. The desired “to-be” where deriving from everywhere and must be
handled and decided upon. Each time a change is decided all areas are affected by the change as
the documentation platform is global.

When all processes are documented it becomes possibility to link processes together across the
enterprise from end to end perspective which requires that level of detail of the documentation is
the same across the enterprise

Process Implementation:

Documentation is a discipline in itself, and is a competence which has been built into the LEGO
Group throughout the project lifecycle. It is important to ensure that everyone who is mapping
business processes is doing it in a uniform manner and that they are constantly updated on the
latest version of conventions.

Process Maintenance/Monitoring:
It is a long journey when it comes to communicating process documentation to all employees in all
areas of the business. Therefore it is essential to have process documentation ambassadors placed
strategically around in the organization. These should be prepared to talk and drive process
documentation in the various business units.

To handle this complexity two networks and a core team have been established. In the process
designer network the process modeling competence and the ambassador role is being grown. The
leadership network sets the direction for process documentation across the enterprise and acts as
an ambassador on a higher level. The core team ensures quality, coordinates and develops the
project across all process streams. The core team is the glue that holds it all together.
Establishment of process documentation
Once you have started to create process documentation there are a series of phases you need to
go though. All phases are unique and require different kinds of attention. The phases you need to
go through are:

1. Communicate to the entire organization to convince them that it is a good idea to establish
process documentation
2. Define the process structure (Level 1-4)
3. Plan and book resources to create process documentation based on the process structure
defined and agreed upon
4. Conduct workshops where processes are mapped together with process experts
5. Identify operational documentations to support the processes
6. Review the process mapping in a wider forum than those who have participated in
workshops
7. Appoint a process owner for all documented processes and allow the process owner to
approve the final documentation
8. When a set of processes are mapped a rollout / training session plan must be created. The
aim of the training is to ensure that all relevant process stakeholders are introduced to the
process owner approved process
9. Make continuous updates to the process documentation
Figure 5: The approach to ensure process documentation is created consistently across multiple areas

A lot of effort was put into the first phase ’Convince’ to create an understanding in the
organization of the purpose of process documentation and to get commitment from the different
management level to the project. The central process team took the ‘road show’ approach using
no ‘powerpoints’ and instead using the 3D model of the pyramid and big posters put onto
cardboard.
All sessions starts with an introduction to why we are establishing process documentation and a
poster with the picture of the three circles (capture knowledge, knowledge sharing and process
optimization) and the AS-IS and TO-BE situation is used. After this introduction the pyramid is
introduced.

Figure 6: example of executive process communication

The four sides of the pyramid showed the process levels with different examples. One side of the
pyramid showing just the simple structure of level 1-6. The purpose of the side is to introduce that
process documentation in the LEGO Group consists of 6 levels and level 1-3 is pre-defined through
the standard process framework.

The second side showing a practical example of taking the level 1 process called ‘Living my life’ and
decomposing that into sub-processes through the levels. For this side a small exercise is always
conducted where the participant is asked to make some notes to ‘What do you do from you get up
in morning until you go to work’. The participants are then asked to share their notes. This small
exercise always shows how different the level of details in their processes is. Exactly the level of
details and aligning the level of details across the LEGO Group is a real challenge.

The third side shows an example for level 1-4 from the standard process framework. This example
is included to show what the standard process frame work will bring and that it is very easy to
relate to.The bottom of the pyramid shows the processes at level 1. The purpose of this side is to
introduce the thinking behind level 1 with operating processes and supporting processes.

After the introduction of the pyramid a poster with the 7 steps to establish process documentation
is introduced. The purpose of this poster is to give the organization an idea of what is takes and
what to do when they need to establish process documentation.

Figure 7: example of operational process communication

The advantage of this kind of introduction is that you get a great dialogue with the organization,
you build the network to come back to when you need to get resources committed and you get a
chance to address any concerns very early in the process.

The Process structure

The LEGO Group has chosen to document the processes based on a process structure which has 6
levels. In order to speed up the process of establishing the first version of a process structure the
LEGO Group decided back in 2010 to build the top down structure upon a standard process
framework which should help to classify and group processes from level 1-3. On level 4 it was up
to the LEGO Group to define the processes and as time has passed the level 2 and 3 becomes
more and more adapted to the LEGO Group.

In an organization that is not very process mature it is an advantage to use this kind of standard
process framework to obtain speed and progress. When the business becomes more and more
process mature the process structure can be adjusted accordingly. The places where the
framework either did not fit particularly well or was not complete the process consultant defined
the process structure in cooperation with the leadership teams in the business.

In order to ease and simplify the communication concerning process documentation and process
structure the LEGO Group built a set of 3D pyramids to explain what and how the 6 levels are
used. The LEGO Group has documented around 2000 processes at level 5 and without a process
structure (level 1-4) to divide and sort these 2000 processes, it would be an impossible task to find
a specific process. At level 5 all the activities, input, output and interfaces are mapped. At level 6
all the details related to each of the activities at level 5 are documented like IT application and
transaction code used to perform the activity, the user guide/work instruction to perform the
activity and the where relevant business rules to the activity.
Figure 8: example of the LEGO Group Operational breakdown, combining the LEGO Group main flow,
processes, applications, business rules, user guides and templates used

The level 1 processes consist of operating processes and supporting processes. The operating
processes show the primary value chain of the LEGO Group whereas the supporting processes are
the processes needed for the primary value chain to operate as smoothly as possible.

Below each of the operating processes at level 1 you will find all the processes that support the
primary value chain e.g. in '2 .0 Develop and manage products and services' you will find all the
processes needed to develop and manage a product and a service portfolio. Level 1 processes in
the LEGO Group are:
Figure 9: example of the level 1 processes

The explanation to each of the operating processes is:

Figure 10: example of the explanation to each of the operating processes

The support processes are basically ensuring that the primary value chain processes function
properly. Support processes are “invisible” to customers and consumers. Support processes are:

Figure 11: example of the management and supporting processes

Example of the process structure

The processes which are used to establish and maintain process documentation in the LEGO
Group are of course also documented and can be used as examples of what both process structure
and process diagrams look like. All processes linked to Business Process Management are in
process stream 12.0 Manage Knowledge, Improvement and Change.

At level 2 you will find a process for each of the areas of business processes, continuous
improvement and change. Decomposing the process ‘Manage business processes(12.01)’ you will
find four sub-processes at level 3. Each of these four sub-processes can again be decomposed to
level 4 processes. Decomposing ’Establish process documentation (12.01.02)’ you will find four
processes at level 4.
The process structure:

Figure 12: example of the ability of process decomposition and composition across the layers

Each of the level 4 processes can be detailed even further and at level 5 you will find a BPMN
diagram showing all the activities in the process, the input to the process and the output of the
process. The level 5 process will also show where and when in the process the activities are
interfacing to other processes or roles (the collapsed pool). The level 5 process is mapped in swim
lanes to show the activities of each role.

The details at level 5 for the process ’Finalize process documentation for review (12.01.02.2269)’
is:
Figure 13: example of the details at level 5 process

To be able to execute each of the activities further details will be found at level 6. At level 6 details
for IT application, transaction code, user guide for that transaction code, business rule and other
relevant documentation for that specific activity can be found.
In the swimlane for the role ‘Document owner’ there is an activity named ‘Create and/or convert
level 6 material’. The level 6 documentation for this activity will eg. be the business rules used for
creating the level 6 documentation in all processes or the quick guide to find documents in the
document repository. See examples below:

Figure 14: example of the documentation details

Global conventions
The LEGO Group has chosen to define one set of conventions that cover the entire organization.
The advantage of defining global conventions is that you are able to tie processes together across
the organization from one end to another and by that create end-to-end processes.

The LEGO Group has chosen to use a standard process notation called BPMN (Business Process
Modeling Notation) and out of the wide range of symbols in BPMN the following symbols have
been selected:

Symbol Group Type Description

Activities Task A task is a unit of work, the job to be performed

Activities Sequence Defines the execution order of activities

flow

Swim Pools and Pools (participants) and lanes represent responsibilities

lanes lanes for activities in the process

Swim Message Symbolizes information flow across pool boundaries.

lanes flow Message flow can be attached to pools, tasks or
message events

Data Message A message depicts the content of a communication

between two participants

Gateways Exclusive Split = Routes the sequence flow to exactly one of the
gateway outgoing branches.

Merge = Awaits one incoming branch to complete

before triggering the outgoing flow.

Gateways Inclusive Split = One or more branches are activated.

gateway
Merge = All active incoming branches must complete
before triggering outgoing flow.

Gateways Parallel Split = Activates all outgoing branches simultaneously.

gateway
Merge = Awaits all incoming branches to complete
 before triggering the outgoing flow.

Events Generic Un-typed events indicate start point (start), state

event changes (intermediate) or final states (end).

Events Message Receiving (start, intermediate catch) and sending (end,

event intermediate throw) messages.

Events Timer event Cyclic timer events, points in time, time spans or
timeouts (start, intermediate catch).

Events Parallel Catching all out of a set of parallel events (start,

multiple intermediate catch)
event

Table 2: Example of the agreed upon conventions (shapes, notations and descriptions)

The Process lifecycle

To have control of the process lifecycle is essential for the LEGO Group's ability to control the
quality and efficiency of processes.

A change to a process starts and ends at a LEGO employee. An employee sees something that can
be improved in a given process which may be due to an identified error, a desire to do things
differently or a good idea. The proposed improvement or good idea is sent to the process owner
and subsequently evaluated together with the process modeling expert and business process
experts. Once a proposal is approved, the process documentation needs to be updated before the
change to the process can be implemented.

As a part of the implementation of the process change the relevant LEGO employees will be
informed of and trained in the new process using the process documentation. After having trained
the employees in the new improved process, it is possible to follow up on the desired effect by
using already defined measures for the process. If the desired state is not met, another change
can be made to the process which again must be maintained, implemented and measured. The
circle is complete.
Process Governance: Ongoing maintenance of process documentation
It is important to ensure that a process change also changes the process documentation and
thereby the standardization accordingly - this again to ensure that the documented processes at
any time are up to date. To be able to handle this, a set of processes which provide formal and
controlled forms of evaluation, approval and implementation of process changes are created. To
ensure that the process documentation at any time is updated, it is important to have the
following in place:

1. Processes for how process documentation is updated at anytime

2. Process owner for all processes

The LEGO Group has defined two sets of processes for ensuring the process documentation is kept
updated:

1. Annual review of the documented processes by the process owner, which support the
value lifecycle of planning, identification, creation, realization, ownership and governance.
2. Every three years the documented processes are verified through an audit-like process
where it is verified if the way in which the process is executed is in line with what has been
documented. Any discrepancies must either change the process documentation or the way
the process is actually being performed. These processes are naturally documented as part
of the process documentation and are available in “Management business process
documentation lifecycle(12.01.04)”.
Figure 15: example of the governance process across the lifecycles

Process Ownership
Process Ownership is a very important element of the BPM journey. The mission of the process
owner at the LEGO Group is defined as:

- ensure efficient and effective business processes across organizational structures linking
the value expectation and operational performance
- manage and develop own processes
- responsible for and mandate to (re-) define, implement (train and communicate
processes), as well as measure and improve the owned processes as needed.

As illustrated in figure 16, Process Owner tasks are defined as follows:

Figure 16: Process Owner tasks

One of the dilemmas about process ownership is that on the one hand, the process owner needs
to have a certain management mandate that will allow direction and create the framework for the
LEGO Group to ensure efficient processes and on the other hand, the process owner needs to
have a thorough knowledge of the owned processes to be able to for example to take an active
part in creating process documentation, perform training or define measurements and verification
of the processes. The process owner has a need for an operational muscle to perform the more
operational tasks and this operational muscle is established through Excellence Teams.

The LEGO Group has in several places in the organization chosen to share execution of process owner tasks,
this is illustrated in figure 17:
Figure 17: Example of execution of process owner tasks

Process owner vs. Line manager

It is important to distinguish between Process Owner responsibility and Functional Line Manager’s
responsibility:

• A Process Owner is accountable for the achievement of the process output, thus
responsible for defining process steps and the resources needed.
• A Functional Line Manager is responsible for allocating the resource needed for the
process. Though a Functional Line Manager can act as a Process Owner for his/her own
processes
• The Process Owner is accountable for ensuring that process output is achieved based on
input, constraints and resources given.

Figure 18: Process Owner responsibility and Functional Line Manager’s responsibility
The LEGO processes are based on a process oriented way of thinking, therefore the area of
control for a Process Owner has to be defined based on Process Owner’s accountability more than
seen from a Functional Line Manager’s responsibility point of view.

This means that a process can contain resources from a single or multiple organizational units
under one or more Functional Line Managers.

It also means that a process should be scoped/limited only based on it’-s nature/characteristics
and not due to organizational boundaries.

5. LEGO BPM Lesson Learned

Organizational Resistance
Very often the journey of establishing process documentation begins with some resistance - some
participants think "process documentation! - now it simply cannot be more boring”. Experience
however shows that once employees enters the world of process documentation and begin to
understand how to do it and start seeing the big picture they begin to realize how valuable process
documentation is.

Valuable communication tool

Process documentation is a valuable communication tool used to clarify the interfaces between
processes and departments and to clarify how the process flows and is being executed. Experience
also shows that when employees participate in the process mapping activities they find it very
easy and valuable to have a process consultant and a process modeling expert present to facilitate
the mapping of the process in a standardized format. The only thing the employee needs to do is
to share all the vast knowledge about the execution of process and not think about where and
how it should be maintained and presented. Once employees have been part of a process
mapping activity they recognize the value it brings, and often ask for more.

Don’t re-invent the wheel

To speed up the documentation process it is highly recommended to use existing standard and reference
content1. One advantage is that employees as well as process consultants who have no prior experience in
a certain area can use the as an access point to process knowledge. It simply gives them a deeper
knowledge in advance. It also helps to ensure that the level of detail for documentation across the

1 APQC (American Productivity & Quality Center)

LEADing Practice Process Reference Content

LEADing Practice LifeCycle Reference Content
LEADing Practice Alignment Reference Content
LEADing Practice Blueprint Reference Content
enterprise will be roughly the same as the standard process framework already adapted across the process
areas.

Change management through story telling

To get the organization on this journey the central process team and the process modeling experts
have spent quite a lot of time introducing process documentation to the departments/leadership
teams across the LEGO Group. A 3D model of the pyramid showing the process structure with
different examples has been used together with big posters of the BPM vision and overview of the
different steps of establishing process documentation. Taking this ‘road-show’ approach has given
a lot of constructive dialogues across the LEGO Group and a lot of concerns have been addressed
very early.

Here are a few quotes from some of the LEGO Group employees:

”I’m really glad, that finally we had a tool thanks to which every employee can easily find all our
processes in one common place, see how processes flow, see the particular roles and
responsibilities in each process and easily access the related documentation, tools and templates. I
really like that every process is now nicely visualized and easily understandable. We shall also not
forget that thanks to the visual form of the mapped processes we will have a great opportunity to
start working on a simplification of our processes and their alignment between the various sites.”
”Polaris has taken the ‘guess work’ out of business processes and has provided a source of very
valuable information”

"It's been really rewarding for me to participate in Polaris training. All levels of management must
take ownership of our processes so that we are aware of our processes and the opportunity to
help each other to become more efficient in the future.
We all need to know our processes. It is such a dynamic world we live in and it is therefore
important that we can gain support from our processes which are the most stable in our
organization. Polaris creates transparency and thus an opportunity to become more efficient,
eliminate errors and faster onboarding / introduction of new employees."

Summary of LEGO’s Lifecycle Modelling Principles

BUSINESS MODEL

Business Ownership
• Stekholder map
• Business Requirements
• Business Owners

Value Model Revenue Model Service Model

• Strategy Map • Revenue Map • Service Construct & Design
 • Value Drivers
• Customer Interaction
• Value Offerings
• Value Proposition
• Value Construct & Design
• Value Architecture
Business Governance
• Link to strategy
• Critical Success Factors
• Control
• Business Rules
Performance Model
• Business Performance
Indicators
• Key Performance Indicators
• Performance Drivers
• Balanced Scorecard
VALUE LIFECYCLE
Business Planning (including Value Innovation)
• Strategic Business Objectives
• Alignment
Value Creation
• Standardization
• Integration
PROCESS LIFECYCLE
Process Ownership
• Process Owner
• Process Roles
• Process Rules
Analysis
• Process Identification
• Process Gathering
• Process Mapping
New Processes
• New Rules
• New Products
• New Services
Process Governance
• Process Compliance
• Processes Measures
• Process Monitoring
Deploy/Implement
• SOA Service Design
• BPM Collaboration Platform
• Process Publishing
• Process Implementation
• Revenue Flow • Service Delivery
• Revenue Innovation • Service Owner
• Revenue Measurements • Service Roles
• Sales Channels • Service Flow
• Partner channel • Service Rules
• Customer • Service Level Approach
• Service Measurement
• Service Channel
• Service Architecture
Cost Model Operating Model
• Cost Map • Organizational Construct
• Cost Control • Organizational
• Cost Flow Capabilities/Competencies
• Cost Cutting Optimization • Operational Weakness Clusters
• Cost Measurement • Operational Standardization
Value Identification
• Critical success factors of the business
• Identification of duplication
Value Realization
• Effectiveness
• Efficiency
Design Build
• Process Map • Business transformation
• Process Simulation concept
• Performance Drivers • Process Models
• Business Performance • Communication set
Indicators
• Key Performance Indicators
• Process Performance Indicators
Run/Maintain Continuous Improvement
• Business Process monitoring • Pain Points
• Culture buidling • Weakness Clusters
• Process ownership • Business Issues
• Identify Bottlenecks • Optimization
 • Business Process Architects • Process Performance • Effectiveness
• Business Process Experts • Process Calculation • Efficiency
• ESR SOA Service Setup • Transformation
•

APPLICATION LIFECYCLE

Requirements Design Build & Test

• Business Functions
• Business Services
• Business Measurement
• Business Reports
• Application Goals
• Application Modules
• Process Map
• Process Modelling
• Process Simulation
• Application Functions/Tasks
• Application Services
• Ilimination of duplication
• Link between process
Archietcture & Application
Architecture

Deploy Operate Optimize

• Information system alignment • System Measurements • Pain Points
• Data Architecture • Information system • Business Issues
• Technology Architecture Transformation • Weakness Clusters
• Automated Process • Bottlenecks
Performance • Optimization
• Automated Process Calculation • Effectiveness
• Automated Reporting • Efficiency
• Transformation
• Process Performance
• Process Calculation

Table 3: The modelling principles associated with LEGO’s Lifecycle Model in figure 1.

6. Conclusion
a. Findings and Summary

Our BPM journey of documenting, standardizing and automating our business processes has been
a powerful way of supporting the LEGO Group strategy. Realizing that the journey taken, has the
power of linking strategy with operational execution and in order to do so the following needs to
be in place:
- Anchoring and support from top management
- Process experts and process modeling experts appointed to help the business
- Communication material which focuses on the value of process documentation seen from
the business point of view
- User-friendly IT tools where the documentation can be maintained and presented in a
uniform way and user friendly way
- One set of global conventions for process documentation
- And finally, persistence, persistence AND persistence

Establishing process documentation in an organization requires focus, resources and lots of work.
In return the organization can harvest a lot of low-hanging fruits because the employees through
the mapping of processes get good ideas and input from others, which they can go back and
implement immediately, thus work smarter and more efficiently right away.

b. Benefits

We have identified the following benefits:

From a strategic context2:

• Ability to rapidly change business processes in response to to business events and

opportunities
• More agility to enter new businesses
• Enable business model innovation and transformation with business process optimization
and innovation
• Support of ISO certification

From an organizational context3:

• Better information sharing and collaboration across the LEGO Group

• Improved coordination
• Improved organization agility and flexibility
• Bridge geographically dispersed employees

From a process context4:

• Elimination of errors, waste, non-value adding activities and variation

• Reducing the level of process complexity involved
• Reduced number of process steps
• Increased process efficiency/productivity
• Ability to re-use processes
• Improve process quality/consistency/compliance
• Foundation for continuous process improvement
• Create and sustain coherence across the business processes
• Capture the value of a global process approach

2 Based on LEADing Practice Value Case Reference Content

3 Based on LEADing Practice Value Case Reference Content
4 Based on LEADing Practice Value Case Reference Content
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